Book Reviews

Noble Friendship: Travels of a Buddhist Monk by Khantipalo (Laurence Mills) Windhorse Publications 2002

Reviewed by David MacAdams

Khantipalo was born Laurence Mills in 1932 and ordained a Buddhist monk in the late 1950s in India. He spent some three years there, before settling in Thailand for eleven years, where he studied the Dharma and meditated in forest retreats. Khantipalo arrived in Australia in 1973, co-founded Wat Buddha Dhamma at Wiseman's Ferry, New South Wales in 1978, and spent fourteen years there as teacher-in-residence. Later, Laurence became a student of Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, left the monk's life, married his wife Dharmmika and co-founded the Bodhi Citta Buddhist Centre in Cairns.
Many Australians, this reviewer included, may have heard their first Dharma talk delivered by Laurence. His place in planting the seed of Dharma in this country is unique. We have all benefited in some way from his diligence as both student and teacher and the authentic manner in which he presents the teachings of Buddha.
This book revolves around Khantipalo's meetings and life experiences with Sangharakshita, an ordained English Buddhist monk who had preceded Khantipalo to India by several years. Sangharakshita went on to found the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, which now has centres in many parts of the world. Sangharakshita seems to have been a friend, teacher and mentor to the novice monk of the 1950s - prior to the Beat Generation, whose musings about Buddhism subsequently exploded the interest in the Buddhist traditions that we see today.

It is, I believe, hard to imagine the world that was India at the time Khantipalo first encountered it as a novice monk. There are stories of study and practise in the Hill Station of Kalimpong where Sangharakshita and Khantipalo met H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche. There are also tales of long Indian train-rides, accompanying Sangharakshita on teaching tours, where they conducted ceremonies for the conversion of hundreds of thousands of low-caste peoples into 'New Buddhists.' Khantipalo chronicles some of the time spent on several pilgrimages to South India and Nepal. At times the Buddhist holy sites had become Hindu temples, replete with areas for animal sacrifice, a phenomenon that appears to have angered and at times dispirited Khantipalo. It may well have seemed at the time that contemporary Buddhists would only ever occupy a marginal niche in the future. Although the book spans only a short period of time, it appears to the modern reader to have spanned centuries, so great has been the transformation of the Buddhist landscape over the last fifty years.

Khantipalo's writing style is reminiscent of one of those indefatigable English adventurers who expect to traverse the unknown with neither complaint nor remark, and little else than pluck and a hand-drawn map. If there is any complaint about this book, it is that Laurence possesses a naturally dry wit, which is lost in his writing style. The result is that he sounds at times a little severe and humourless. Personally, I would really like to see another book telling about the personal changes and insights that have accompanied Laurence on his journey. I hope that Laurence will write again, this time concentrating more on the how and why of his movement from monastic teacher to lay teacher and Zogchen student.

Old Path White Clouds, The Life Story of the Buddha by Thich Nhat Hanh

Reviewed by Sue Howes

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen-Buddhist monk, scholar, poet and peace activist, carefully and lovingly portrays eighty years in the life of Gautama Shakyamuni Buddha - commonly known as Siddhartha - from twenty-four sources of Pali, Sanskrit and Chinese texts. When I began reading this book, I was deceived by its simple, non-intellectual style of delivery. Its stories can be read aloud to children and enjoyed by teenagers and adults alike.

What impressed me most is that Thich Nhat Hanh offers a tribute to Shakyamuni Buddha's connection with children, who were drawn to him naturally. Small circles of children daily offered food to Siddhartha, including Sujata, a young girl who came upon the ascetic Siddhartha when he was unconscious from lack of food, and gave him milk. Children shared fruit with Buddha following his enlightenment and received his teaching in relation to mindfulness. Accordingly, the children asked Buddha if his path could be called the 'Path of Awareness' and if they could call him the 'Awakened One,' or the one who shows how to live in awareness. As one of the children stated, '"Awaken" in Magadhi is pronounced budh. "A person who is awakened" would be called Buddha in Magadhi. We can call you Buddha.'

The body of the text is divided into three books. Book One, as you might imagine, tells the story of a prophecy and Prince Siddhartha's birth; the growing awareness that he and his wife, Princess Yasodhara, had, that he would have to leave the palace; along with his enlightenment; and the first 'Turning of the Wheel of Dharma.' Book Two relates the teachings of Buddha, the beginning of the Sangha, meeting with the wonderful Sariputra and the popularity of Ananda as an official recorder of Buddha's teachings, due to his extraordinary memory. When Sangha members were unable to travel with Buddha, they wanted Ananda to be present, knowing that he would flawlessly relate back every word that was spoken. The march of Queen Gotami and fifty women wanting ordination as nuns is also described, including Ananda's mediation with Buddha and the eight rules designed to allow the women to join the Sangha in harmony. Book Three details further teachings, three attempts upon the life of Buddha, and his passing into nirvana.

Old Path White Clouds is an immensely touching book, whose stories flow like a river. Any reader, who has the fortune to be part of a Sangha with a teacher, will be inspired by the human difficulties faced and overcome by Buddha and his students using mindfulness and awareness. Reading this book, you feel that you have travelled with the Buddha.

Transcending Madness by Chogyam Trungpa

Reviewed by Scott Probost

This book consists of the transcripts of two seminars on the bardo conducted by Trungpa Rinpoche in 1971 in Vermont and Colorado. Like many of his books, the text consists of fairly short expositions of the central topic, followed by extended exchanges with his students on related ideas as they enter discussion.

The 'madness' of the title is our everyday experience, described through the idea of the bardo states, and our 'becomings' into these states. We are told that the Tibetan bar means 'in-between' or 'no-man's-land,' and is like an island in that uncertainty. 'Its like a flowing river which belongs neither to the other shore nor to this shore, but there is a little island in the middle, in between. In other words, it is present experience, the immediate experience of nowness - where you are, where you're at.'

Although we usually see our daily process and experience as 'life,' the energy that it takes to maintain sane functioning versus the chaos of indecision is something that Trungpa Rinpoche continually turns on its head. He tells us to see this everyday maintenance as profoundly mad and control-oriented, rather than wholesome and open. For example, one exchange is prefaced by Trungpa standing behind a large mirror, in which the audience can see themselves, for an extended period of time and yelling out the word 'hell!'

For our egos, this is actually the good news. Trungpa's message is that if we face the insecurity, paranoia, uncertainty and flux of becoming, without attempting to hide behind it - or hide 'in the observer,' to use Trungpa's own words - we can benefit from the basic wisdom of that state. Our paranoia, for example, becomes the realisation that all of those things that we fear may be, in a pitched state of uncertainty, is in fact the central aspect of discriminating wisdom. Without the process that we might later label as paranoia, we do not ever make a totally free choice.

Transcending is not actually the process Trungpa Rinpoche describes, he instructs us more to pay attention, to be in the bardo state without attempting to control or manipulate the becoming experience. He does not appeal to any type of relativism in his presentation - he merely instructs us to pay attention to what is actually happening inside our own skins. Without copping-out into the 'observer' who tries to dictate what we may or may not think about, we mine the real gold of the becoming process. 'Normality' and 'abnormality' are two way-stations on this journey.

The text is fairly dense and rich with Trungpa's inversions of confusion and clarity, comfort and pain, that his readers will be familiar with. The extended discussions are extremely illuminating, as the students make attempts to relate his presentation to their own states. This is a deeply psychological book, in the sense that Trungpa Rinpoche exhorts us to come to grips with the psychology of our own minds in the most fundamental way.